Quote ="Blueboy"As a fax fan this is a bit of a shock, but Oldham are a decent side.
Regards the ref, he won't care if he's had a shocker, he'll still be picked to ruin a game next week
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Thanks Blueboy - the first post to give Oldham any credit. Yes we are a decent team and are really an NL1 team operating in NL2 (or whatever they are calling the leagues this year). As someone else has said we beat a full strength Salford team in this comp last year together with Whitehaven and smashed Dewsbury by 50 points in the Challenge Cup - but this year we are even stronger having recruited players like Highton and Reilly who have extensive SL experience, Thomas Coyle who played a couple of games for Wigan in SL last year, together with Greenwood, L'Anson, Ballard, who played at NL1 last year. Ex Widnes man Dave Allen still to come into the team who has looked good in pre-season and would have played had he not picked an injury. Add to that a number of players on last year's squad who have played at a higher level. Oldham are nobodies mugs.
Even with 13 men in the first half an hour Widnes really struggled to break Oldhams defensive line.
Yes ref had a shocker, was bad for both sides but we probably got a couple of the key decisions (1) sending off - which I thought was harsh (2) late penalties in front of sticks - but Widnes really didn't help themselves with very poor discipline.
As for the post about atmosphere - I witnessed a lot of Widnes fans barracking the ref and then the fans didn't really come alive until the ten minute spell in the second half when Widnes got on top and fought back.
Very happy with the Roughyeds performance, think Widnes have significantly more problems than we do on that display.
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